The Concise Oxford Dictionary (p925) describes morality as: '1) Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour; a system of values ​​and moral principles. 2) The extent to which an action is right or wrong'. What is morally right in relation to one moral framework may be morally wrong in relation to another, and unfortunately no moral framework is the final word in terms of true morality. We all live our lives according to moral rules, the statement in the essay question states the relativist thesis about the justification of our moral principles. This essay will examine different approaches to morality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Relativism and absolutism are theories concerning morality and the justification of our moral judgments. Relativists believe that all morals are equally valid, that there is no single true morality, and that there are many different moral frameworks, none of which is more correct than the others. Relativism has been criticized quite heavily because it implies the validity of even the idea that relativism is false, and because of such views they are undermining the act of trying to improve the way we think. Moral rules, values ​​and beliefs vary from society to society and relativists argue that even if our society sees the values ​​of other societies as "bad", this is just as correct as our own values. They argue that even if something is wrong, as long as we thought it was right at the time, then it was. Few philosophers describe themselves as relativists, but some include Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Emile Durkheim. There are many different types of relativism. Two of these are individual relativism (subjectivism) and social relativism. Individual relativism states that individual human beings are responsible for their own morals, while social relativism states that society decides what is right or wrong, i.e. we inherit our moral principles from our society. Both of these theories have their problems. With individual relativism the moral debate becomes impossible, because if we accept that the individual can make mistakes, we cannot agree with individual relativism since according to this theory the individual cannot make mistakes, furthermore individuals could not improve or reform themselves if they changed their minds. Bertrand Russell (1935) in his chapter on 'Science and Ethics', in his book 'Religion and Science', essentially states that if two men have a disagreement about their values ​​then they are not actually having a disagreement but simply a difference in their values. taste, goes on to say that this is so because it would be impossible to prove that this or that has intrinsic value, basically because there is no way to decide who is right in a difference of values, there must be a difference of tastes, not an objective truth. With social relativism the problem is that there is no unanimity in society, how do you determine what society approves of? You can't do it one hundred percent, and if you were to get a majority of votes, would the majority be right? Anyone who disagrees must be wrong by definition, it is extremely oppressive towards minorities and makes debate between societies impossible. The essay question is not precise enough to decide which of the two relativisms we are talking about. The idea of ​​relativism is summarized by Durkheim (1905), who suggests that "the content of morality changes with the passage of time: each society has its own particular system which is never the same as that of another society. Nor it is possible to demonstratewhich set of morals is superior, since each seems to work well for the particular society in which it is found.' (Durkheim: Essays on Morals and Education, p116). The alternative to relativism is absolutism. Absolutists believe that there is a common moral standard for all of us. They believe that some moral principles and values ​​are right whether we accept them or not, in other words we have no choice, they just are, for example that the square root of nine is three, we don't question it because we know it just is. They believe that principles are universal. They also believe that if an act is morally wrong, then any similar act must also be wrong. It seems that not many philosophers agree with the theory of absolutism, but basic moral diversity is not a contradiction of moral absolutism. Where there are differences in societies' cultures, there are usually differences in circumstances, and differences in culture are differences in circumstances that can and do affect moral right and wrong without implying moral relativism. Even when the circumstances are essentially the same, simple differences do not disprove absolutism. Each of us lives our life according to a certain set of moral principles, we must be able to justify our moral principles. Justification is that which concerns the determination of right action and appropriate beliefs. We cannot have knowledge of a belief without justification, but at the same time we can be justified in believing something that is false, for example if someone were sitting in a room with no windows and heard a weather report saying it was raining where they were, we might say that the belief was well founded. So let's say this person heard what sounded like rain outside, it may not actually be raining, the sound could simply be that of a neighbor watering his yard, yet this person has a justified belief. Justification usually consists simply of being able to provide adequate reasons for a particular belief. One problem with justification is being able to determine what counts as adequate reasons for providing justification. We also like to make exceptions to our moral rules, for example by lying, if a friend asked us if he was nice, but he wasn't, we might say yes and we would be able to justify this lie by stating the obvious fact that we didn't want to hurt feelings of our friends. Another problem with justification is that it is not possible to justify a moral conclusion from a set of facts, for example David Hume (1711-76) states "no ought from an is" (A Treaty of Human Nature, BkIII, Pt 1 , p469). The process of reasoning for the purpose of justification can be seen as argumentation in four forms, inductive, deductive, conclusive and prima facie. Inductive and deductive justification requires evidence and logical evaluation. For the final justification the reasons are analyzed by asking whether another rational human being would have the same belief if given the same reasons. Prima facie is giving several reasons to believe something and then deducing which is the most important. In conclusion, moral right and wrong is just a matter of opinion. First relativism, it simply doesn't make sense to believe that all morals are equally valid, for example the fact that we should be kind to people and the fact that we shouldn't kill people are on extremely different scales. Individual relativism at first seems to be a probable theory because in the end it is individual human beings who decide on their own morals, some are inherited from our society, but in the end we are the ones who decide. But at the same time, having said.